A CRITIC AT LARGE appeal to the members of the audi- ence, many of whom may feel like out- siders, too, and unloved, or not loved enough, or victims of some prejudice or exclusion. But the motherless child also has powers, and will someday be a suc- cess, an artist, a screenwriter. It's the wound and the bow all over again, in cargo pants. As the female nerd attracts the at- tention of the handsomest boy in the senior class, the teen movie turns into a myth of social reversal-a Cinderella fantasy. Initially, his interest in her may be part of a stunt or a trick: he is lead- ing her on, perhaps at the urging of his queenly girlfriend. But his gaze lights her up, and we see how attractive she really is. Will she fulfill the eternal American fantasy that you can vault up the class system by removing your specs? She wants her prince, and by de- grees she wins him over, not just with her looks but with her superior nature, her essential goodness. In the male ver- sion of the Cinderella trip, a few years go by, and a pàle little nerd (we see him at a reunion) has become rich. All that poking around with chemicals paid off Max Fischer, of "Rushmore," can't miss being richer than Warhol. So the teen movie is wildly ambiv- alent. It may attack the consumerist ethos that produces winners and los- ers, but in the end it confirms what it is attacking. The girls need the seal of approval conferred by the converted jocks; the nerds need money and a girl. Perhaps it's no surprise that the out- siders can be validated only by the people who ostracized them. But let's not be too schematic: the outsider who joins the system also modifies it, opens it up to the creative power of social mobility, makes it bend and laugh, and perhaps this turn of events is not so different from the way things work in the real world, where merit and achievement stand a good chance of trumping appearance. The irony of the Littleton shootings is that Klebold and Harris, who were both proficient computer heads, seemed to have for- gotten how the plot turns out. If they had held on for a few years they might have been working at a hip software company, or have started their own business, while the jocks who oppressed them would probably have wound up selling insurance or used cars. That's the one unquestionable social truth the teen movies reflect: geeks rule. T HERE is, of course, a menacing sub- genre, in which the desire for re- venge turns blood Thirty-one years ago, Lindsay Anderson's semi-surrealistic "If. . . " was set in an oppressive, class- ridden English boarding school, where a group of rebellious students drive the school population out into a courtyard and open fire on them with machine guns. In Brian De Palma's 1976 master- piece "Carrie," the pale, repressed heroine, played by Sissy Spacek, is courted at last by a handsome boy but gets violated- doused with pig's blood-just as she is named prom queen. Stunned but far from powerless, Carrie uses her teleki- netic powers to set the room afire and burn down the school. "Carrie" is the pri- mal school movie, so wildly lurid and funny that it exploded the clichés of the genre before the genre was quite set: the heroine may be a wrathful avenger, but the movie, based on a Stephen King book, was clearly a grinning-gargoyle fantas So, at first, was "Heathers," in which Christian Slater's satanic outsider turns out to be a true devil. He and his girl- friend (played by a very young Winona Ryder) begin gleefully knocking off the rich, nasty girls and the jocks, in ways so patently absurd that their revenge seems a mere wicked dream. I think it's unlikely that these movies had a direct effect on the actions of the Littleton shooters, but the two boys would surely have recog- nized the emotional world of "Heathers" and "Disturbing Behavior" as their own. It's a place where feelings of victimization join fantas and you experience the social élites as so powerfW that you must either become them or kill them. But enough. It's possible to make teen movies that go beyond these fixed polarities-insider and outsider, blond- bitch queen and hunch-shouldered nerd. In Amy Heckerling's 1995 com- edy "Clueless," the big blonde played by Alicia Silverstone is a Rodeo Drive clotheshorse who is nonetheless pos- sessed of extraordinary virtue. Freely dispensing advice and help, she's almost ironically good-a designing goddess with a cell phone. The movie offers a sunshiny satire of Beverly Hills afflu- ence, which it sees as both absurdly swollen and generous in spirit. The most original of the teen comedies, 97 Discover I the power of... RESPECT AN EXPLORATION SARA LAWRENCE-LIGHTFOOT 1 C'CS = c -= c i H^ I I . b k " . Move y, moving 00 . -Tracy KIdder "Its message, the important idea at its core, will linger with the reader for a long time afterward:' - The Boston Globe A Merloyd Lawrence Book At bookstores now PERSEUS BOOKS A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP I I:'!I , DISCOVER THE SPLENDOR OF ITALY Beautiful homes for rent at affordable weekly rates in Abruzzo, Tuscany, Umbria. Lakes Como & Garda, the Italian Riviera, Rome, Amalfi., Capri. Venice, S icily & more. 800 280 2811 ú- _ $ "p: ,1 www.theparkercompany.com . , TIm PARKER COMPANY n ITALIAN VILlAS & TOURS ' I 5 Million Pieces! China, Crystal. Silver, Collectibles Q Ri;rAëEr:;; :b;;ø I-800-REPIACE (1-800-737-5223) 1089 Knox Road, Greensboro, NC 27420. 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